She had rushed recklessly into her engagement, regarding marriage with Roger much as though it were a stout set of palings with “No Right of Way” written across them in large letters.  Outside, the waves of emotion might surge in vain, while within, she and Roger would settle down to the humdrum placidity of married life.  But the dull, ceaseless ache at her heart made her sometimes question whether anything in the world could keep at bay the insistent claim of love.

She tried to reassure herself.  At least there would always remain her music and the passionate delight of creative work.  It was true she had written nothing recently.  She had been living at too high an emotional strain to have any surplus energy for originating, and she knew from experience that all creative work demands both strength and spirit, heart and soul—­everything that is in you, if it is to be worth while.

These and other disconnected thoughts flitted fugitively through her mind as she sat waiting for Penelope’s return.  Vague visions of the future; memories—­hastily slurred over; odd, rather frightened musings on the morrow’s ceremony, when Penny would bind herself to Ralph “. . . in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation.”

Rather curiously Nan reflected that she had never actually read the Marriage Service—­only caught chance phrases here and there in the course of other people’s marriages.  She switched on the light and hunted about for a book of Common Prayer, turning the pages with quick, nervous fingers till she came to the one headed:  The Solemnization of Matrimony.  She began to read.

“I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed . . .”

How tremendously solemn and searching it sounded!  She never remembered being struck with the awfulness of matrimony when she had so light-heartedly attended the weddings of her girl friends.  Her principal recollection was of small, white-surpliced choir-boys shrilly singing “The Voice that breathed o’er Eden,” and then, for a brief space, of a confused murmur of responsive voices, the clergyman and the bride and bridegroom dividing the honours fairly evenly between them, while the congregation rustled their wedding garments as they craned forward in their efforts to obtain a good view of the bride.

Followed the withdrawal into the vestry for the signing of the register, when everybody seemed to be kissing everybody else with considerable lack of discrimination.  Finally, to the inspiriting strains of Mendelssohn—­who evidently saw nothing sad or sorrowful in a wedding, but only joy and triumph and the completing of life—­the whole company, bride and bridegroom, relatives and guests, trooped down the aisle and dwindled away in cars and carriages, to meet once more, like an incoming tide, at the house of the bride’s parents.